Bello, Arroyo apologist
Since March, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has condemned the series of assassinations and terrorist attacks perpetrated by the US-Arroyo regime against activists and leaders of mass organizations which are among the political forces most assiduously opposed to the regime's corruption, oppressive economic policies and puppetry to the US government.
The CPP has subsequently explained how Walden Bello's smear campaign against the CPP and progressive propeople organizations has dovetailed and served the regime's intensified fascist campaign since the first quarter of 2005.
Both Bello's statements in December 2004 and the Armed Forces of the Philippines' (AFP) briefing paper entitled "Knowing the Enemy" that pinpoint organizations like Bayan Muna (BM), the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) have the same objective. They both link these organizations to the revolutionary armed movement to justify their being targets of fascist attacks and the use of armed force against their leaders and members.
Fearing further isolation due to their attacks on the legal democratic movement, Bello and Akba-yan issued an extremely belated statement on the series of political assassinations.
In issuing the statement, however, they have only succeeded in further exposing themselves as apologists of the Arroyo regime and its fascist attacks against activists and leaders of propeople organizations.
Bello and the Akbayan cannot deny that military and paramilitary forces of the Arroyo regime are behind the killings. In the face of all this, however, Bello and Akba- yan could only come up with a mild rebuke of the Arroyo regime for its failure to issue a "categorical denunciation" and for its "inaction to stop the killings."
All Bello and Akbayan have done is to issue a lame appeal to the Arroyo government to use its "human rights mandates, vast resources and intelligence network" to solve the murder cases.
They muddle the issue and obscure the fact that it is the Arroyo regime that is behind the brutal and systematic campaign of suppression against propeople organizations.
Bello and Akbayan have merely made a feeble admonition to the Arroyo regime that it would be held "accountable for gross human rights violations" if it chooses to "ignore the killings." They cover up the fact that it is the Arroyo regime and its armed minions that have endorsed and actually perpetrated the series of killings of activists whom they regard as "enemies of the state" and "targets of the anti-terrorist war." Bello and Akbayan have no other objective but to confuse the people and to assuage the people's seething anger at the Arroyo regime's fascist attacks on a people waging resistance.
Bello and Akbayan's recent statements, which redound to a defense of the Arroyo regime, provide further elucidation on the real objectives of the attacks against the CPP and progressive organizations that have escalated since December. Since then, Bello and the Akbayan together with an international network of Trotskyites and imperialist-funded NGOs have led an international campaign to demonize the CPP as "fascist" and have demanded that the propeople progressive organizations they have labeled as "CPP fronts" denounce the CPP and the New People's Army (NPA).
Bello and his associates are laboring under the mistaken belief that by undertaking this international psywar campaign, they could preempt the aboveground mass-based progressive forces from denouncing the terrorist attacks of the AFP, PNP and other armed minions of the Arroyo government.
Significantly, despite their pretensions to being "Left", Bello and Akbayan are not included in the AFP's list of "enemies of the state" in its "Knowing the Enemy" briefing paper (which Bello and Akba- yan are also conspicuously silent about). They obviously pose no threat to the powers that be and have proven to be "good citizens"of the oppressive and exploitative system. Their insidious attempt to eliminate both the revolutionary and progressive forces in one fell swoop exposes them as nothing but reformist lap dogs of the reactionary ruling system.
| 
